As students and faculty in the U.S. return to campuses for the fall semester, there are innumerable reasons to continue demonstrating against institutional complicity with Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. The need for those protests is as urgent as it’s ever been.
University and college administrations, however, are not only signaling plans to treat pro-Palestinian speech with intellectual dishonesty, they’re making clear they plan to use their specious logic to inflict evermore repressive intolerance.
New York University led by troubling example when the school shared an updated code of student conduct last week. Ostensibly aimed at curtailing bigotry, the new language instead shuts down dissent by threatening to silence criticism of Zionism on campus. Students who speak out against Zionism — an ethno-nationalist political ideology founded in the late 19th century — will now risk violating the school’s nondiscrimination policies.
The corporatized industry of American higher education is hardly a site of social justice and liberatory knowledge production. There is, however, something particularly ghoulish in NYU’s actions here.
Students who speak out against an ethno-nationalist political ideology founded in the late 19th century will now risk violating the school’s nondiscrimination policies.
School communities are returning to a new academic year after a summer in which Palestinians have seen no shred of respite from Israel’s U.S.-backed eliminationism: constant bombing and forced displacement, a campaign of targeted starvation, purposeful destruction of water supplies, and denial of basic medical care. Instead of fighting against U.S. material support for these conditions, however, university administrators like those at NYU have spent that same summer prefiguring ways to demonize anti-genocide protesters as bigots.
Tucked into a document purportedly offering clarification on school policy, the new NYU guidelines introduce an unprecedented expansion of protected classes to include “Zionists” and “Zionism.” Referring to the university’s nondiscrimination and anti-harassment policy, known as NDAH, the updated conduct guide says, “Speech and conduct that would violate the NDAH if targeting Jewish or Israeli people can also violate the NDAH if directed toward Zionists.”
The university’s NDAH rules are intended to reflect the school’s legal obligations, including to Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination and harassment based on a student’s race, color, national origin, religious identity, shared ancestry, or ethnicity.
“Using code words, like ‘Zionist,’” the guide says, “does not eliminate the possibility that your speech violates the NDAH policy.”
“Dangerous” Title VI Precedent
The entire premise of the guidance — that........